The Homeopathic Treatment and Prevention of Cancer

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The Homeopathic Treatment of Cancer

Cancer is a disease which is chronic in nature. It is an imbalance of the Vital Force of subtle onset and gradual progression throughout which the Vital Fore offers unsatisfactory resistance. Since cancer is a chronic disease, it can be successfully treated and/or prevented by addressing the underlying energetic imbalance of the Vital Force. One of the best means to achieve this goal is through Homeopathic treatment. In order for Homeopathic treatment to be effective, treatment must first be targeted at the specific organ or tissue affected by the cancer. Remedies that target the cancer tumour must then be given to eliminate the overgrown pathology. When the tumour is eradicated and the patient is vital enough, then the underlying energetic imbalance may be addressed by careful constitutional prescribing.

Through careful prescribing, cancer may be prevented by addressing the inherent susceptibility and removing any irrational or maintaining causes of the otherwise healthy individual. "He is likewise a sustainer of health if he knows the things that disturb health, that engender and maintain disease, and is aware of how to remove them from healthy people." 1

Cancer, as with all chronic diseases, if untreated, will lead to death. The imbalance that leads to cancer occurs first on the general level. As the disease brought about by the imbalance of the Vital Force progresses, the cancer tumour manifests at the

1 Sixth Edition of Organon of the Medical Art, Aphorism 4, p.61, Samuel Hahnemann

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local level. A person's inherent susceptibility predisposes them to developing cancer. If the imbalance isn't addressed, the local manifestation of the disease will take form in a particular part or system that is weak or sensitive.

As Homeopathic treatment directly addresses the energetic imbalance of the Vital Force, it is a useful tool in both the treatment and the prevention of cancer. Samuel Hahnemann states: "When a person falls ill, it is initially only this spirit-like, autonomic life force (life principle), everywhere present in the organism, that is mistuned through the dynamic influence of a morbific agent inimical to life. Only the life principle, mistuned to such abnormality, can impart to the organism the adverse sensations and induce in the organism the irregular functions that we call disease."2

Since the Vital Force is weakened by the overgrown pathology, cancer may initially be treated as a one-sided disease. Hahnemann states: "Diseases that appear to have only a few symptoms are termed one-sided because only one or two main symptoms stand out, almost obscuring the rest of the befallments. Because of this, these diseases, which belong chiefly to the class of chronic diseases, are more difficult to cure."3 Indeed, cancer is challenging to the Homeopathic Practitioner as the patient presents with a paucity of symptoms and the enormous burden of the pathology seems to have taken them over. If the Homeopath reads further into the Organon, he will find that "if one selects an internal medicine, directed at the whole, which is fittingly

2 Sixth Edition of Organon of the Medical Art, Aphorism 11, p.66, Samuel Hahnemann 3 Sixth Edition of the Organon of the Medical Art, Aphorism 173, p.177, Samuel Hahnemann

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homeopathic, it will cause the most salutary alteration, the recovery of the whole human being, along with the disappearance of the external malady, without the assistance of an external means."4 Furthermore, "By means of this medicine, taken only internally, the general disease state of the body is lifted simultaneously with the local malady...proving that the local suffering depended simply and solely on a disease of the rest of the body and was only to be regarded as an inseparable part of the whole."5 This is the beauty and the strength of Homeopathy; it's ability to address both the underlying energetic imbalance of the Vital Force and the outwardly manifested localization of the individual's diseased state.

Before I leapt into too much reading, I wanted to hear from contemporary Homeopaths as to what their approach is to treating a cancer patient. By the time I had spoken to a few Practitioners, I discovered that there are too many schools of thought, and being able to reach a consensus among them would be nearly impossible. Some Homeopaths stick to the Classical Hahnemannian principles in their approach:

? Treating the patient as a whole and giving one remedy at a time ? Searching for those strange, rare, and peculiar symptoms on which to hang the

case. Others based their prescription on the predominant miasm in the case. A Homeopath I consulted suggested that there are now more miasms than Hahnemann discovered, and named the ergot miasm as a possible offending cause. Some Practitioners believe in sequential prescribing as the way to treat, others follow the Ramakrishnan approach,

4 Sixth Edition of the Organon of the Medical Art, Aphorism 191, p. 182, Samuel Hahnemann 5 Sixth Edition of the Organon of the Medical Art, Aphorism 193, p.183, Samuel Hahnemann

4 while still others follow the old masters in treating cancer cases. One thing I found in common among them was that they all claimed to have had some success in treating cancer patients. At least this was encouraging.

I have never met a person who has not in some way been affected by this disease called `cancer', either directly, or through a friend or family member who has become afflicted. With this in mind, I have gathered as much information as possible on the subject, and have begun a quest with the aim of finding something that, when compiled, would be of some benefit.

Approaches

Arthur Hill Grimmer By addressing the inherent susceptibility of the patient, careful Homeopathic

prescribing may prevent cancer from occurring in the patient who is in the precancerous phase. When the pathology develops into neoplasm, and when dedifferentiation occurs, it may be useful to target the local manifestation first in order to eradicate the tumour and support the specific organ or tissue affected. Once the local manifestation of the disease is reduced in size and strength, prescribing a carefully selected "constitutional" remedy based on the patient's individualized symptoms can restore balance to the Vital Force.

This type of approach at treatment is perhaps not thought to be truly Homeopathic in nature but seems sound. Arthur Hill Grimmer suggested that: "The great difficulty in advanced cases of cancer is the inability to obtain therapeutic individualization of

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symptoms. They have the pathology and all the common symptoms that go with it, but they are not sufficient to make a good homoeopathic prescription. They tell you about cancer, but they tell you only in a very general way of a group of remedies."6 The ability to obtain enough characteristic symptoms from the patient with the advanced pathology is of concern, as advanced cases can present as one-sided.

It seems that once the local manifestation of the inner imbalance appears (tumour or neoplasm), the first concern for the Practitioner must be to eradicate the tumour as effectively as possible: "There is likewise in cancer a rational local treatment whose object is the tumoural destruction, be it by irradiation or better still by operative oblation, be it by local application of homoeopathic remedies, it should be practiced each time this is possible, for without that the treatment of general detoxification is shown to be insufficient in the greater part of the cases. Pathology is often the only thing you can obtain. In such cases one must go back in the history of the patients as far as he can, from the beginning of life, and trace it step by step, his sicknesses, reactions to environment, the history of things that have come upon him by way of accident, and irritations - all those things, including vaccinations and serums-and better still, the history of his immediate progenitors and his immediate family."7

This statement raises a very important question: how do we effectively take the case of the cancer patient? For information on case taking, there is no better place to

6 Homeopathic Treatment of Cancer, 1st Indian Edition, Arthur Hill Grimmer, compiled in Encyclopedia Homeopathica 7 Homeopathic Treatment of Cancer, 1st Indian Edition, Arthur Hill Grimmer, compiled in Encyclopedia Homeopathica

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